Gerolsteiner considers suit against Sinkewitz

Hans-Michael Holczer, team manager of Team Gerolsteiner, said that he is considering a lawsuit...

Hans-Michael Holczer, team manager of Team Gerolsteiner, said that he is considering a lawsuit against Patrik Sinkewitz, who recently tested positive for testosterone. "We are looking at how accountable we can make him," Holczer said in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "I won't make any claims now, but my attorney is definitely investigating what possibilities there are. Because we are in Germany, Sinkewitz is in Germany, we have a clear legal situation."

The 53 year-old Holczer also said that "I wish for nothing more than the comparison of the 600 DNA samples of all the pro cyclists with the blood bags in Spain from the Puerto affair. The traditional system of cycling is: Shut up and sit tight. But that doesn't bring us any further."

He called for a type of Cycling-Interpol to police doping in the sport. A new program "must start at the top, by WADA or the UCI or whomever. The topmost program is the most important, actually only WADA can do that. At any rate, the UCI must not do it itself, there must be an independent control firm, and they must be willing to risk money on it. For example, the Spanish should fly to Germany and the German controllers to Spain. That would eliminate the national component." He added, "And maybe they will even have to go a step further and have their people sit outside of the riders' hotel rooms. Maybe we will have to go that far."

Gerolsteiner doesn't have an antidoping program like T-Mobile or CSC, but "We do have a very large antidoping program and we follow the UCI's program." The team's program "has a very preventative character," Holczer said, " and not just with the riders. Of our 18 soigneurs and mechanics, only two of them have previous experience with cycling teams -- the rest we got from other places."

"This basic position is important: How do we speak internally about doping, how do we handle the subject? This position brings problems with it, by the way, in that it makes us unpopular with a certain part of the peloton. For example, there were riders at the Tour who wouldn't speak to me. But that didn't bother me."

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